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Apple Mac Pro Computers’ Production will Solely Take Place in the U.S.

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The China-U.S. trade war does not seem to settle anytime sooner, amid which, many of the tech companies are facing real big issues. Even companies like Apple, despite being the biggest tech companies are not able to escape the heat.

For the past few years, Apple has been importing some of its major Mac components from China, as buying or manufacturing the same parts in the U.S. is a bit expensive. But due to the friction between the two countries, Apple had to make new arrangements for the components. At last, the company has got a green signal from the U.S. government for a cut in the tariffs on in-house manufacturing of the same components.

So finally, Apple now will be manufacturing its new Mac Pro computers solely in the U.S., and that too, in Austin, Texas. The company revealed the news on Monday, but it did not give any hints on when the computers will be out in the market. According to the previous reports from June, the company was planning to do the manufacturing in China, but as the government has given some revise on the tariffs, what can be better than that for Apple?

Mac Pro
Image Source: ilounge.com

“The Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful computer ever and we’re proud to be building it in Austin. We thank the administration for their support enabling this opportunity. We believe deeply in the power of American innovation. That’s why every Apple product is designed and engineered in the U.S., and made up of parts from 36 states, supporting 450,000 jobs with U.S. suppliers, and we’re going to continue growing here.” said the Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The new Mac computer is the same $5,999 redesigned computer, that the company had revealed at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June. For the manufacturing of the various important parts, Apple has partnered with over a dozen American companies.

Over the China-U.S. trade war, U.S. President Donald Trump also encouraged the U.S. based tech companies for manufacturing the products and their parts within the country. On this, he gave a statement, “Make then in the U.S.A., no Tariffs! A man I have a lot of liking for and respect is Tim Cook, and we’ll work it out, I think they’re going to announce that they’re going to build a plant in Texas and if they do that I’m starting to get very happy, okay.”

If the manufacturing is solely done in the U.S., Apple may spend $350 billion in the U.S. by 2023, contributing to the U.S. economy to a high extent.

twitter new feature

Twitter Wants You Follow Your Interest With its New Feature

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The tech industry is evolving every day, and every big tech company, as well as the startups, are coming up with new service, products and updates every sing day. So there has to be something that the other existing companies have to do to sustain through the increased competition. Despite being one of the biggest social media networks, Twitter also knows that it has to experiment with new things so that it can maintain its position in the market.

Taking a step in the same direction, Twitter announced that is working on a new feature to be included into the platform, that would allow the users to see tweets based on their chosen interest on their timeline. For now, the company is still testing the feature and will be launching soon after the successful tests take place.

With the new feature, the users will be able to follow their interests as they do for any individual’s account, and this way, Twitter will curate a relevant feed for the users. The platform is going to take the help of machine learning to bring the tweets based on the user’s interest together and show it up in their feed.

twitter new feature
Image Source: sciencemag.org

The company is calling the new feature “dedicated interest experiences”, which it has already talked about in recent years and finally it is conducting tests with them. The topic of interest for the users can be any of the sports teams, celebrities, or the television shows, but according to the product manager at Twitter, Rob Bishop, for now, the interest will only be based on sports. The initial tests are being carried out on the android devices only.

With the feature, Twitter will also bring up topic suggestions for the users, so that they can find their interest among the suggestions and follow them. Also, there will be an option to mute a particular topic you do not want to see the tweets about.

Twitter is also testing another feature, through which the users will make a list of their interests they follow and want to follow. The company even demonstrated the feature, where a product manager mixed hashtags and a few individual accounts to make a list. The list was accessed by swiping the app’s home screen.

The company is also looking forward to testing the other features like search option in DM, reordering a certain photo in a posted tweet, customizable timeline and support for Apple’s Live Photos.

windows 7

Windows 7 Users will Need to Upgrade to Windows 10 by the End of this Year

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Last month, Microsoft officially announced that it is going to end providing support for Windows 7 and asked its users to upgrade their PCs with Windows 10. The company took it to their blog post to announce the news and even provided with details on how the users can upgrade to Windows 10 and other things as well.

The company has said that the users will still be able to use Windows 7 on their laptops and PCs, but they won’t be getting any support like security upgrades from the company starting from January 2020. This way, the PCs with Windows 7 won’t be secure from the malicious malware and virus attacks.

Microsoft has also recommended that the users skip installing Windows 10 on their old laptops and PCs. Instead, they should go for new systems that are faster and are better working with Windows 10.

windows 7
Image Source: howtogeek.com

It has been over five years after Windows 10 was launched, even then the company has been offering support for Windows 7. But now, it seems that it wants to focus better on Windows 10 and wants the users to get some new laptops and PCs. Alongside the announcement, the company also flaunted the various features that the new Windows 10 laptops and PCs will offer the users.

For upgrading to Windows 10, one has to back up their data on an external hard drive so that they don’t lose it. Microsoft has given a detailed description on how to backup data from Windows 7. The company has also mentioned a few of the main reasons why one should go for new laptops and PCs, inbuilt security being the prime reason.

The company has started sending reminders to most of its Windows 7 users about the upgrade. The company has said that it will be sending those notifications for a few times. But the users can easily turn off these notifications. The notification leads the users to the same blog post that Microsoft has posted on its website regarding the upgrade.

The upgrade can cost the users a good amount, but the apps and security Windows 10 offers, are worth it. The Windows 10 comes in three different versions, Windows 10 Home (costs INR 9,299.00), Windows 10 Pro (costs INR 14,799.00) and Windows 10 Pro for Workstations (costs INR 22,799.00).

Windows 7 is now ten years old, and yet it is as popular as it was a decade ago. Even the launch of a revamped Windows 10, in 2015, could not convince most of the people to upgrade to Windows 10. But now, the company has found a way to make Windows 10 its prime product.

Samsung Finally Released its Next Generation Galaxy 10 Series Smartphones

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Samsung has just added three new models to its Galaxy smartphone flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+, and S10e. The company launched the phone in its Samsung Galaxy Event on 19 February, held in San Francisco, along with another Galaxy smartphone, i.e. Galaxy fold and other devices including the Samsung wearable, earbuds, etc.

All the four phones are redesigned with the new smart screen, providing the cinematic view to its users. The screen is baseless, and even the front camera is placed within the display, to provide the HD photo quality. By default, the screen resolution is full HD+ and can be changed to Quad HD+ from the Settings.

samsung-galaxy-10
Image Source: cnet.com

The three Galaxy S10 phones are in different screen sizes. The S10 is having a 6.1” screen, the S10+ has got the 6.4” screen, and the S10e has been provided with a 5.8” display. All the three smartphones are having a Quad HD+ and dynamic AMOLED Infinity-O Display. The display is HDR10+ certified, providing the most real display to its users. The AMOLED display is specially built to comfort the eyes, as it reduces harmful blue light by 42 per cent.

The most innovative feature that the company has embedded to its latest flagship Galaxy S10 and S10+ phones is the fingerprint scanner, which has been moved from behind to the front screen of the phone. The scanner uses the ultrasonic pulses to detect the fingerprints. For the S10e smartphone, the fingerprint scanner has been moved to the power button of the phone.

Coming to the camera of the new Galaxy smartphones, the S10 and S10+ are having similar back camera frame including three cameras, i.e. wide-angle (12MP), ultra wide (16MP), and telephoto (12MP) camera. For the S10 plus, there are two front cameras embedded to it, a selfie camera (10MP) and an RGB Depth Camera (8MP). Galaxy S10 has one front camera, whereas the Galaxy S10e has two rear cameras and one front camera.

All three phones are designed with the AI features that adapt to the users’ behaviour and learn their daily routine patterns. The Galaxy S10+ has a 4100mAh, Galaxy S10 has 3400mAh battery capacity, and Galaxy S10e has 3100mAh battery capacity. The next generation smartphones are capable of charging the other Qi-certified devices as well, only by placing the devices on the top of the phone. The device that can be charged using those smartphones includes the Samsung wearable, earbuds and wireless chargers etc.

The RAM size of the smartphones has been increased up to 12GB, the S10e having a 6GB RAM size for the basic model, and the S10 as well as S10+ having a RAM size of 8GB for the basic models. The internal storage for the Galaxy S10e, S10, and S10+ has also been enlarged to up to 1TB, which is expandable up to 1.5TB via microSD card.

The Wi-Fi speed has also been increased to maximum 1.2Gbps for both Download and Upload, along with the increased LTE speed 2.0Gbps for the Download and 150Mbps for Upload. All the three Galaxy S10, S10+ and S10e phones are both water and dust resistant.

There are four to six colours available for the three models, including the Prism White, Prism Black, Prism Green, and Prism Blue, which are common for all the three Galaxy phones. The Samsung Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10e will be available for preorders from February 21, while the devices will become available in stores and online beginning March 8, 2019. The price range for Galaxy S10 starts at $899.99, for Galaxy S10+ starts from $999.99 and for Galaxy S10e starts from $749.99.

Startup Company Unveils World’s First Foldable Smartphone, Beats the major Tech Giants

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Quite unimaginable, but a start-up company has beaten the big giants by making the world’s first foldable smartphone named the Royole FlexPai. Although companies like Huawei and LG had expressed their intentions of developing bendable smartphones in 2019, now they won’t be the first ones to do so. The smartphone was unveiled by Royole Corporation, a California-based start-up company, at a conference, in Beijing, China on Wednesday.

The device is a tablet with a 7.8-inch display in a single panel that can be folded into halves, the screen remaining on the outer side, without breaking and making the size of the tablet fit into the pocket. The device is 7.8mm thick and can be bent up to 180 degrees, with the help of a hinge, that is placed at the spot of the fold. The device has the 1920×1440 pixels resolution screen. On the folded position, the screen on the edge shows the notifications and other settings options.

Royole FlexPai
Image Source: royole.com

The device is empowered by the Water OS 1.0, based on the Android 9.0 Pie OS and runs on the Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon 8-series processor. Interestingly, the smartphone is using the latest processor, that still has to be launched officially in coming two months.

The smartphone is also providing better camera quality with a 16-megapixel widescreen lens and a 20-megapixel telephoto lens, dual camera, having an aperture of f / 1.8. The camera can be used when the screen is opened to the tablet format. The smartphone comes with a storage range starting from 6GB to 512GB, and a 3,800mAh Lithium Polymer battery.

The company has established a workshop in Beijing, China, for the manufacturing of the smartphones, and is currently available for the pre-orders in China only. The price for the three variant of the device is set as ¥ 8,999 (€ 1140) for 6GB RAM model, ¥ 9998 (€ 1265) for 8GB RAM model and ¥ 12999 (€ 1645) for 8GB RAM model. The company has proclaimed that it will spend 200 million yuan into global firms that would develop apps and software for the device. Also, the Royole FlexPai is said to be released in the global market in December 2018.

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K is Cheaper & is Beating its Predecessors

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After shipping the Fire TV Cube ($120) and third-generation Fire TV ($70, now discontinued), last year, Amazon has now launched a much cheaper yet outperforming 4K HDR video streaming device, named Fire TV Stick 4K. The device claims to provide better performance and costs only $50.

This time the remote of the device has got more features than the device itself, as now this tiny Alexa voice remote can control the TV with the power, volume, and mute buttons. With the remote, the user can control the TV’s current HDMI input, the attached soundbar, as well as can tune the channels, on the satellite set-top boxes.

Fire TV Stick
Image Source: timeincuk.net

The previous Fire TV devices can also be paired with the remote and can be bought separately. Also, the new Fire TV Cube will now be available in the market, with this new Alexa remote. Alexa enabled device can help the user to check the weather, control the smart lights, pull up a feed from the doorbell cam, or access Alexa’s other functionalities with a simple voice request. To use Alexa in the handsfree mode, the user just needs to pair the Fire TV stick with an Echo device.

The predecessors of the Fire TV Stick were built on the 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, that too is improved in the newly launched device, as it is powered by the 1.7 GHz quad-core processor. The high-performance device, now includes the hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 video, enabling the user to plug-in the HDHomeRun Connect TV tuner into the Wi-Fi router, and enjoy over-the-air channels from an antenna. This enables the users to watch full broadcast quality channels on their home TVs.

The Fire TV Stick 4K has got the support for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, that its predecessors, Fire TV pendant and Fire TV Cube, lacked and supported the basic HDR10 format. The device also converts the standard dynamic videos to HDR. The device is connected to the TV with a USB port, streaming excellent picture and sound. The Fire TV Stick has got various inbuilt apps, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and also streams the live TV services such as PlayStation Vue and Hulu. Still, the device does not have an app for Walmart’s Vudu service.

The device is the cheapest to stream the Dolby Vision, and it has provided a lot of content to the users to scroll over, keeping the business strategy clear in mind. The faster software handling and more sensitive voice command functionality of the device, at such a price, is making a huge difference with the performance as compared to the Roku and even the Apple TV. The Fire TV Stick, currently, is only available for the Amazon Prime members.